Chapter 1

Innately Human

The wind hissed at Ilsa as she fled. The forest awakened with each breath, swaying in the hope of catching her mid-step. A rock suddenly appeared in Ilsa’s path, dull and mocking as she almost tripped. She willed her legs to sprint faster, but nature was not going to let her through unnoticed.

A branch dipped, pressured by the swirling air.

With no time to dodge, Ilsa crashed into the tree’s draping arm like an enraged bull. Not enraged"frightened and blind"that was what kept her charging into the heart of nature. Ilsa’s hands rose to her face, a delayed reflex that caught the trickle of blood down the side of her nose, moments before it could fall past her parted lips.

Over the crunching of sticks and the rustling of her heavy dress, the shouts of her pursuers grew louder. Ilsa could feel herself slowing down against her will, her hunger making her muscles stiffen and rendering her body as fragile as the dry leaves of the forest. She was losing her bearings with each step. Ilsa felt the hidden power of the forest spin around her like dancers around the bonfire for the Dark Moon, and secretly wished that she had more Innateness to tap into the energies around her.

Ilsa’s balance spiralled. Was the world revolving around her, or was she merely running around in circles? The sun had only dipped a little in its arc since Ilsa was looking at the newly-unveiled tapestry. The detailed notice in the city square, she recalled, offered a large sum for the young woman who was all too familiar. Unfortunately, the meticulous depiction was also recognised by those who saw Ilsa’s face in broad daylight.

Exhausted, she stumbled a few more paces. Just a bit more, she tried to fool herself, and they might give up. A knife flew towards her, but landed on the ground at a wide angle to her right. Already neck-deep in fear, Ilsa’s response was relief that no law-abiding commoner could carry a bow and arrow. Deep down, she knew that her pursuers would eventually catch up with her; on top of rationing her meals, she hadn’t eaten for almost a day. Yet, she refused to give up until her shallow gulps of air choked her instead of giving her life. Until then, Ilsa was still in control, still somewhat powerful…

Pinpricks consumed her skin, cascading from her scalp like a fountain. Thrown off guard, Ilsa began to tremble, unable to control a rage and disgust that wasn’t her own. It had happened a few times since she’d arrived in the city. Like a phantom forcefully replacing her soul, the unfamiliar emotions trapped Ilsa in a corner of her mind"a coffin nailed shut. This time, there was a fleeting image: a large clearing with blots of darkness that looked like unmoving bodies. A fallen flag lay to her side. Ilsa recognised the banner.

She snapped out of the trance with a big gulp of air. Distracted, Ilsa didn’t realise that her pace had slowed to nauseated staggers. She had no time to comprehend the shouts that entered her head as the forest re-materialised. Frantic arms and legs swarmed towards her, tackling her to the ground.

Stunned, Ilsa forgot to struggle. Her heart sank when she recognised the manager of the slain performer that she was investigating the day prior.

“I haven’t done anything,” Ilsa wheezed indignantly. She rolled over into foetal position, the damp leaves moving with her. Surrounded, Ilsa wished that she could melt away into the dirt. Not like an Innate, but disappear for good. If she was wanted all over the nation with giant tapestries to prove it, Ilsa had somehow upset the Crown.

“If you’re innocent, then why run away?” the manager retorted. Ilsa gave him credit for the logic, although she knew that the outcome would have been the same if she’d just allowed herself to be arrested. Another pursuer demanded the surrender of weapons, as if Ilsa was still worth her puny weight in danger. In a haze, she told them about the dagger in her left boot. Then, she let them remove the arrow-shaped amethyst pendant from her neck. Ilsa saw no threat with the jewellery, which she wore for clear-headedness when pondering causes of death. Her small pouch was searched, but to Ilsa’s surprise, her captor placed the single limp bag of coins back, along with the confiscated items.

“Take care of those,” Ilsa murmured. Both the dagger and the necklace were parting gifts from her former mentor, who taught her everything from starting a fire with a stick to identifying when a deceased met his end. Ilsa was sure that she was heard, but received no response. The man walked away with her pouch, and a young woman squeezed herself into the front of the crowd, holding another necklace. Her accomplices nodded, agreeing that the precaution was necessary. Ilsa was puzzled; if she had the power to strike, she would have done so already.

Ilsa lifted her head to allow the leather cord to slide around her neck. The black stone stuck to her skin like a dollop of snow, the cold striking but immediately melting away. In the end, it was all about the Innates. The ones who tore up the beautiful country of Kolmer"they’d never been forgiven. Nothing was as important as eradicating the so-called magic from this land.

Whatever charges that Ilsa would face, she could not let her Innateness slip. It wouldn’t matter that she had used her weak powers to bring families closure and peace; Innateness was outlawed with a punishment worse than death. Isolation. Treatment with no hint of humanity. Creation of fear from fear. No motive was stronger than fear itself.

✾ ✾ ✾

“So, how many people have you killed?”

Excuse me? Ilsa gritted her teeth as the carriage went over another bump in the road, reminded of why she hated the civil patrol. She had been stuck in confinement with three of them for what felt like days. Just because she had seen more than a commoner’s fair share of dead bodies, the officer still had no right to question her dignity.

“There’s a theory going ’round that you’re responsible for a string of unresolved murders around the country,” another one piped up.

“As well as treason, of course.”

“Citizens who recognised your face on the tapestries claimed to have seen you in all the right towns around the time of each murder.”

“Impossible,” Ilsa said, feeling as though her heart had plunged down a ravine.

“Ah, I was beginning to think that you were mute!” the first officer taunted in delight. Ilsa had no more to offer; she could not comprehend the amount of accusatory evidence against her, from the guards’ stories to her alleged treason against the Crown. She recalled that the last body she examined had a curious broadsword wound"an injury that could have only been dealt by someone with access to military weapons. She almost wished for the spirits of all the murder victims to come forward and tell her the truth.

But it doesn’t work that way, Ilsa reminded herself. She concluded long ago that traumatised ghosts must not like to linger, let alone look for a weak Innate investigator to talk to. The three patrol officers bickered on about what Ilsa might also have done. She gradually tuned out the words hanging in the air, sensing her world in snapshots: a crack on the windowsill, the smell of rust wafting from the chains around her limbs, the insignia on the guards’ uniforms.

The vivid image of the torn battlefield returned to Ilsa’s mind. She saw the  singed flag of the Militia, cast aside in the dust. What should only have been a pattern that Ilsa learnt in passing now had an eerie hold over her. Ilsa could find no explanation for why she felt this way; being an Innate, she should naturally fear the Militia, who made Innates vanish from the face of Kolmer for a living. Yet, the inexplicable loyalty felt undeniable.

Just like the new titles that were piling up on Ilsa’s name. Traitor. Liar. Fugitive. Murderer.

Author's Note

Copy and pasting issues may have turned some dashes into quotation marks

Reviews

[Lavorther]

Wow. Just... wow. I'm really impressed by your writing. I hesitate to use the word, but it's flawless. There was nothing I could find that could be improved, which is something I always end my reviews with. Just ask some people I've reviewed, they know my lists of quotes and suggestions.

This chapter drew me in right from the start, and it kept my attention until the end. I scrolled up once I was done reading and was surprised by how long it was. It felt much shorter than it was (which is a good thing).

I was happy to have found a typo, so that I had at least something to point out, in the part where you wrote "foetal position". Turns out that's also a correct spelling, just one I hadn't seen before.

Anyway, great start of your book. You've got a fan already, I'm looking forward to the next chapter. I also saw you have another book on here, which I'll read shortly.

PS: I'm familiar with those copy-pasting issues. I found a fairly simple solution: copy your story into notepad, and then copy it from there into the submission form. This will remove all formatting and solve the problem, but you'll have to do the formatting again by hand. Things like fonts, cursive or bold text, possibly indentation as well.

[Gladys]

Oh wow, thank you so much for the positive review, Dirk! I'm Australian so I use British English - probably why foetal seemed like a weird word. Don't worry, as the chapters go on there will be plenty of things to pick at... The first two chapters I edited and rewrote several times to submit for university, so that's why they'll look clean compared to the rest, where I just lose concentration... Thanks for the copy and pasting tip as well! That's so helpful!

[Lavorther]

Yeah, I'm mostly familiar with the American spelling, but I'm glad I at least double-checked it before pointing it out. I'll keep that in mind when reading future chapters.

[Voidwvlf]

[Part 2/2]

I really enjoy your use of descriptive language in this piece. It brings the reader into the scene. The crunching of sticks and rustling of clothes brings the reader into the characters senses in a natural way. I'm just not sure that a dress belongs here. It seems unwieldy and by now the reader isn't picturing her in a dress at all—the description of running would work better if she wore pants or shorts. Alternatively, you could replace that passage about the rock in the first paragraph with something that indicates her tripping over her dress.

"Ilsa’s balance spiraled. Was the world revolving around her, or was she merely running around in circles?"

^I love that. It's an exquisite piece that clearly communicates her exhausted confusion in a way that isn't in-your-face.

"Innateness was outlawed with a punishment worse than death. Isolation."

^You've used Innateness several times now, without explaining what it means. I had a discussion with Takeshi about the use of unfamiliar words in writing, and what I said then applies here. You must, sooner rather than later, allow the reader to be let in on the definition of words you use outside of their normal case. You imply earlier that innateness is some kind of attunement with environments or elements, but it isn't made clear. Continued use of a word like this without a definition to ground the reader means the reader loses connection, and thus interest.

I do commend you on the concept of Innateness, however. Done right, I think it could be a central and driving theme of your book.

I apologize for the length here. I read this and knew that there was some kind of passion behind this, because you've already put so much effort into setting up for a future with this piece. I loved reading it; I really, really did. It was enjoyable and interesting, and left off with that perfect cliffhanger so many struggle to write. A little more polish, and this would be an ideal first chapter to something I'd pick up in a shop.

I want more of this, and I'll be an avid reader of the next chapter too!

[Gladys]

Hey, I LOVE your review! You make really helpful points here, and I'll definitely take those into consideration when I finish and come back to edit.

I went back to look at the references to Innateness, and I do agree that it is a bit vague. It's essentially magic/manipulating energy, but I didn't want to use that word because it sounded lame haha

[Voidwvlf]

The reader will forgive something that sounds slightly lame as long as it enabled them to make sense of the story.

One of my favorite things to do is look at a sentence that seems boring or plain and find ways to rearrange or replace words. Sometimes even a simple punctuation mark turns it from run-of-the-mill to really standing out. Compare my Nymphet piece to my Trouble in the High Skies, and you'll see that despite being shorter, Nymphet is, in punctuation, far more "colorful".

[Gladys]

Maybe I'll add something about how people sometimes crudely refer to it as "magic". Interesting.

[Voidwvlf]

[Part 1/2]

If you re-edit your work and change the extra quotes back into dashes, it will likely stick. I often have to do the same to my writing.

Now, as for your story: I like it! You don't waste time with unnecessary exposition, but instead begin with the action, which is a good way to get readers hooked.

When one writes action, however, they must be careful to avoid slowing it down. Otherwise you're left with a jilted pace that yanks the reader back and forth. A good example of this is your passage about the rock in the first paragraph. It doesn't need to be there, and in a lot of ways, it shouldn't be. Why would she have time to notice the rock, if she was running at breakneck speed? How would she know the rock was dull, if she barely stopped? You could have her leaping over an exposed root, or jumping a brook, but the rock slows the action and seems out of place.

The part about the branch dipping—a lovely description, by the way—can be folded into acting as the first sentence of the second paragraph, instead of standing on its own. This helps the general flow. In addition, the use of 'raging bull' doesn't fit in here, as her primary emotion and motivation is fear. Using the wrong emotion, while a nice image, severs the connection of the reader to the character because there's no consistent follow-through. Take another look at this and see how you can describe running into something while utilizing panic/fear. Omitting the next sentence—which is slowing down the action— would allow you to describe her, perhaps, thus:

Ilsa crashed into the hanging branch, the wind being knocked from her lungs as the tree punched her gut. The force caused the branch to break, and she collapsed to the ground in a mess of bark and wheezing breaths. A rock awaited her haphazard fall and connected with her nose, leaving her in a swirling world of pain. Ilsa's hands rose, shaking, to her face—a delayed reflex that caught the drops of blood moments before they could adorn her parted lips like rubies.

This is getting a little long. I'm going to swap my laundry and come back!

[Leroy Sinclair]

ilsa sounds like a lady Leroy Sinclair would invite to Norway House to get drunk on firewater and fornicate, my native intuition is speaking to me and it says ilsa may have bedded an animal or was born from a lady who fornicated with several animals, at Norway House we frown on interspecies relations

[Max]

It's a great story. Now a days there are a lot of fictional stories in the market and most of them are similar.
But your story had a different element in it which made it different from others and drew me in.
I also like the way you use words to keep your story somehow mysterious.
I'm glad dirk recommended this story to me.
Again, great story!!

[Gladys]

Ah, thank you Max (and Dirk)! This started off as a medieval detective mystery actually, but I think I wanted more immersion in the world so it became this haha. I'm glad that you liked it!

[HeyJadeXO]

This is executed wonderfully! I enjoy the beginning to this story and look forward to reading more in the future . =]

[Gladys]

Thank you so much for the feedback!